Intel is making waves in the world of artificial intelligence, spinning out a new startup focused entirely on delivering AI solutions tailored for the enterprise. Dubbed Articul8 AI, this new company has backing from investment firms like DigitalBridge and aims to bring the power of generative AI to businesses across industries.
For the past two years, Intel has been quietly building cutting-edge generative AI models optimized to run on its hardware. Earlier this year, the company partnered with elite consulting firm Boston Consulting Group to deploy these models for specialized tasks within BCG’s workflows. The results clearly impressed, as now Intel is spinning this technology out into a fully-fledged platform available to enterprises beyond just BCG.
Articul8’s software is designed to keep customer data, model training, and inference execution within an organization’s own security perimeter. This allows businesses to tap into the promise of AI while still maintaining control and privacy. The platform also provides the flexibility to deploy across cloud, on-premises, or hybrid infrastructure.
Leading Articul8 as its inaugural CEO is Arun Subramaniyan, a veteran Intel executive who previously led parts of the company’s data center and AI division. Although Intel will retain ownership stake in the startup, Articul8 is assembling its own team of engineers and experts to continue enhancing the software platform.
This launch represents Intel’s largest push into commercializing AI software yet. While much of its business still relies on selling chips powering AI computation, applications relying on advanced AI models require just as much innovation on the software side. Spinning out Articul8 allows Intel to pour more focused resources into tailoring and optimizing its Generative AI frameworks for enterprise use-cases.
At the same time, Intel benefits from exposing this technology to more potential customers. Articul8’s platform showcases the performance and scalability of Intel hardware for AI workloads. As more companies adopt Articul8’s software, it could directly translate into greater data center chip sales for Intel down the road.
The spinout also helps Intel capitalize on the booming interest in generative AI from enterprises. Technologies like DALL-E 2, ChatGPT, and others from startups like Anthropic have captured business leader attention in recent months. However, many companies still struggle figuring out how to actually deploy these cutting-edge models within their existing workflows.
Articul8 wants to provide an end-to-end solution, making it faster and easier for organizations to build custom large language models and reap the benefits. The company has financial backing not just from Intel, but also investment firms focused on high-growth enterprise startups.
With Articul8 now launched, I expect generative AI adoption to accelerate across sectors like finance, telecom, aerospace, and more in 2024. While concerns still linger around data privacy, security vulnerabilities, and potential bias in models, tools like what Articul8 provides help mitigate these risks by keeping development and execution within an organization’s control.
As AI continues marching forward, delivering outsized benefits will require the blend of research prowess from companies like Intel combined with the nimble drive of startups like Articul8. This type of synergistic relationship where both parties have aligned incentives could be the key recipe for overcoming ongoing challenges in deploying advanced AI. If Articul8 takes off, I suspect we might see similar spinouts from other chipmakers as well, sparking a new wave of enterprise AI innovation.